I just finished a 10.899km running that lasted about 0hh:53mm:32ss !
You probably don't remember, but late August, in spite of the summer, my training was going fairly well, at least compared to my usual laziness. A run every two or three days, and my pace was improving, with a few runs near or even slightly below 8min/mile. Not fast in any way, but better than its been for a long time. As you can see in the list below, September started okay as well, with my longest run 8.15 mile around that same 8min/mile pace. But that's around the time the summer heat made a strong come back, along with lots of thunder storms. That completely derailed my training and motivation. After that, it was maybe one run a week, with some of them at slow pace, because I couldn't even run the whole way and had to walk sometimes. Not great to prepare the Detroit half marathon this Sunday October 20!
Anyways, for my final real training run on Wednesday (my last run last year was on Thursday, but this year, I wanted to add one final slow and easy run on Friday), I was hoping to test myself a bit. It was at night, under the almost full Moon, and among the Halloween decorations in the neighborhood, hence the cover photo. The temperature down in the low 40s was great. I think my sweet spot is between 35 and 40F (or 2 and 5C). The idea was to run about an hour and see how much distance I could cover. In the end it was a bit less than one hour, but the pace around 7:54 min/mile was quite better than anticipated. Of course, that was barely half the half-marathon distance, but that's more than 1 minute faster per mile than my target (a 9 min/mile pace is sufficient to keep me under 2 hours for the full race). So I think it was still quite encouraging.
Like I said, to finalize the preparation, I was planning one short run on Friday at a leisurely pace, just to 'stay in motion'. I ended up running about 6km, with around 9min/mile pace. Turns out what now feels like slow and easy is the race pace I'm hoping for. I guess that's a good sign too. And since I wasn't going full speed, I tried to improve some of the metrics I am usually really bad at, like cadence. It was indeed better, as usually I am 0% in target range... Reaching the last blocks near home with so much energy left, it was tempting to sprint, but I didn't of course. Getting injured at the last minute would be too stupid, even for me!
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Well, even if my training was inconsistent, it was still significantly better than last year. July and August last year were really lazy, and I only started running a bit more regularly a month before the race, with my final runs quite slow compared to this year. And I have one big advantage: even if I'm still well over my ideal weight, I am about 10 pounds lighter than last year around that same time. That makes a huge difference! All in all, I don't want to be overconfident, but with the excitement of the race, and the crowd cheering, I am really hopeful I can get back under 2 hours for the half marathon. I tried to ignore it, but going over the 2hour mark for the first time last year was upsetting. Let's fix that on Sunday!